LibrePlan

Discover its new features.

During the last weeks I’ve been working in a new feature for LibrePlan that allows to update the project plan using the data from the timesheets. Let’s use an example in order to explain the new functionality better. Imagine that you have scheduled ... [More] a task to be done during week 45, however the timesheets reporting hours to that task are in week 47. This means that you’re not fulfilling the plan and you have a delay of 2 weeks in that task. Besides, maybe that task has dependencies with other tasks, so this delay also means that other tasks are going to be delayed. Some questions: How could you check that information in LibrePlan? How could you update the current plan? In order to solve these problems a new feature has been developed. The final implementation includes different things which will be explained below. Mark a task as finished from the timesheets In the timesheets UI (both in standard and personal timesheets) you’ll have the option to mark if a task is finished or not. You can only mark a task as finished once, but the task end date will be taken from the last timesheet reporting hours over that task. Then, when you use the new button to adapt the planning, a new 100% progress of type timesheets will be set for the task, which means that the task has been finished. Pop-up to mark task as finished in personal timesheets New marks in reported hours bar If you use the button Show/Hide reported hours, you’ll see the pink bars in the Gantt representing the hours reported in the timesheets compared with the planned (or estimated) hours. Now, together with that information you’ll also see two square brackets, that represent the first and last date in which there’re reported hours in the timesheets. Gantt showing marks with information from timesheets As you can see in the picture most of the tasks started more or less when it was planned. However, we can detect some issues: Draft task is delayed 2 weeks, which makes Template task to be delayed too. Shopping cart task was started in the planned date, however it’s taking more time than expected. Adapt planning button There is a new button (close to Reassign) in the project Gantt view that will allow you to adapt your current planning with the information extracted from the timesheets. This will allow you to modify your planning as people report hours in the timesheets. Planning adapted according timesheets data Once the planning has been adapted according to timesheets data, you’ll see the actual status of your project. Moreover, you’ll have the possibility to know which tasks are finished. In the example the finished tasks are only: Draft, Product management and Shopping cart. With all this information you’ll be able to modify the future planning in order to finish the project in the expected date (maybe allocating more resources, reducing some tasks, …). Summarizing, we think that this is a nice addition that could be helpful to our users in order to manage better their projects. It’ll be available in the upcoming version 1.3.2 (you can already test it in the unstable environment) and, as usual, we’ll be really glad to receive your feedback about it. If you want to know more, you can review the analysis and implementation notes at LibrePlan wiki. Finally, we’d like to publicly thanks to SOMABE for sponsoring this development. As you probably know Igalia offers this kind of customizations and other services around LibrePLan, don’t hesitate to contact us. [Less]

During the last weeks I’ve been working in a new feature for LibrePlan that allows to update the project plan using the data from the timesheets. Let’s use an example in order to explain the new functionality better. Imagine that you have ... [More] scheduled a task to be done during week 45, however the timesheets reporting hours to that task are in week 47. This means that you’re not fulfilling the plan and you have a delay of 2 weeks in that task. Besides, maybe that task has dependencies with other tasks, so this delay also means that other tasks are going to be delayed. Some questions: How could you check that information in LibrePlan? How could you update the current plan? In order to solve these problems a new feature has been developed. The final implementation includes different things which will be explained below. Mark a task as finished from the timesheets In the timesheets UI (both in standard and personal timesheets) you’ll have the option to mark if a task is finished or not. You can only mark a task as finished once, but the task end date will be taken from the last timesheet reporting hours over that task. Then, when you use the new button to adapt the planning, a new 100% progress of type timesheets will be set for the task, which means that the task has been finished. Pop-up to mark task as finished in personal timesheets New marks in reported hours bar If you use the button Show/Hide reported hours, you’ll see the pink bars in the Gantt representing the hours reported in the timesheets compared with the planned (or estimated) hours. Now, together with that information you’ll also see two square brackets, that represent the first and last date in which there’re reported hours in the timesheets. Gantt showing marks with information from timesheets As you can see in the picture most of the tasks started more or less when it was planned. However, we can detect some issues: Draft task is delayed 2 weeks, which makes Template task to be delayed too. Shopping cart task was started in the planned date, however it’s taking more time than expected. Adapt planning button There is a new button (close to Reassign) in the project Gantt view that will allow you to adapt your current planning with the information extracted from the timesheets. This will allow you to modify your planning as people report hours in the timesheets. Planning adapted according timesheets data Once the planning has been adapted according to timesheets data, you’ll see the actual status of your project. Moreover, you’ll have the possibility to know which tasks are finished. In the example the finished tasks are only: Draft, Product management and Shopping cart. With all this information you’ll be able to modify the future planning in order to finish the project in the expected date (maybe allocating more resources, reducing some tasks, …). Summarizing, we think that this is a nice addition that could be helpful to our users in order to manage better their projects. It’ll be available in the upcoming version 1.3.2 (you can already test it in the unstable environment) and, as usual, we’ll be really glad to receive your feedback about it. If you want to know more, you can review the analysis and implementation notes at LibrePlan wiki. Finally, we’d like to publicly thanks to SOMABE for sponsoring this development. As you probably know Igalia offers this kind of customizations and other services around LibrePLan, don’t hesitate to contact us. [Less]

During the last weeks I’ve been working in a new feature for LibrePlan that allows to update the project plan using the data from the timesheets. Let’s use an example in order to explain the new functionality better. Imagine that you have ... [More] scheduled a task to be done during week 45, however the timesheets reporting hours to that task are in week 47. This means that you’re not fulfilling the plan and you have a delay of 2 weeks in that task. Besides, maybe that task has dependencies with other tasks, so this delay also means that other tasks are going to be delayed. Some questions: How could you check that information in LibrePlan? How could you update the current plan? In order to solve these problems a new feature has been developed. The final implementation includes different things which will be explained below. Mark a task as finished from the timesheets In the timesheets UI (both in standard and personal timesheets) you’ll have the option to mark if a task is finished or not. You can only mark a task as finished once, but the task end date will be taken from the last timesheet reporting hours over that task. Then, when you use the new button to adapt the planning, a new 100% progress of type timesheets will be set for the task, which means that the task has been finished. Pop-up to mark task as finished in personal timesheets New marks in reported hours bar If you use the button Show/Hide reported hours, you’ll see the pink bars in the Gantt representing the hours reported in the timesheets compared with the planned (or estimated) hours. Now, together with that information you’ll also see two square brackets, that represent the first and last date in which there’re reported hours in the timesheets. Gantt showing marks with information from timesheets As you can see in the picture most of the tasks started more or less when it was planned. However, we can detect some issues: Draft task is delayed 2 weeks, which makes Template task to be delayed too. Shopping cart task was started in the planned date, however it’s taking more time than expected. Adapt planning button There is a new button (close to Reassign) in the project Gantt view that will allow you to adapt your current planning with the information extracted from the timesheets. This will allow you to modify your planning as people report hours in the timesheets. Planning adapted according timesheets data Once the planning has been adapted according to timesheets data, you’ll see the actual status of your project. Moreover, you’ll have the possibility to know which tasks are finished. In the example the finished tasks are only: Draft, Product management and Shopping cart. With all this information you’ll be able to modify the future planning in order to finish the project in the expected date (maybe allocating more resources, reducing some tasks, …). Summarizing, we think that this is a nice addition that could be helpful to our users in order to manage better their projects. It’ll be available in the upcoming version 1.3.2 (you can already test it in the unstable environment) and, as usual, we’ll be really glad to receive your feedback about it. If you want to know more, you can review the analysis and implementation notes at LibrePlan wiki. Finally, we’d like to publicly thanks to SOMABE for sponsoring this development. As you probably know Igalia offers this kind of customizations and other services around LibrePLan, don’t hesitate to contact us. [Less]

After several months working on the application, it’s now available the website of the project LibrePlan Audiovisual www.libreplan.com/audiovisual It’s a section inside the main LibrePlan website, which has been the starting point for this ... [More] adaptation oriented to solve problems identified on the companies of the audiovisual sector in Galicia. More specifically on the area of budget ellaboration and monitoring of audiovisual projects. It was neccessary to have a tool to allow the standarization of budget creation on a collaborative way, and to ease controlling of costs and time deviations over the initial budget, produced during the ellaboration of adiovisual products, solving the problems due to be using other non specific tools. The project has been developed by Igalia and Wireless Galicia with the collaboration of the Galician Audiovisual Cluster (CLAG), and financed with public fundings. Among his main features we can remark the next ones: Budget templates system Create new projects from configurable template trees with the budget structure and predefined data. Budget execution forecast Visualize and modify the distribution along time of the cost of the budget items, and compare the real costs to do the neccesary adjustments. Advanced assignment of forecasts and cost details Distribute in a fine grained detail level the expenses forecast, use the cost sheets to track the produced expenses during the project and integrate the costs system with other tools to import expenses through Web Services. Filming productivities perspective Measure the productivities on the ellaboration of the multimedia product being developed, according to different unit types (scenes, minutes or script pages). Define an initial filming plan, specifying the estimated productivities, compare them with the real measurements and adapt the forecasts.   Planning, expenses and payments plan reports Generate printable reports either on PDF or HTML showing information on the project execution. More detailed information on the application features, and the documentation can be accesed at http://www.libreplan.com/audiovisual/main-features/ As the LibrePlan project, on which this solution is developed, LibrePlan Audiovisual is Open Source with AGPL license, and cam be downloaded and used freely. In the same way, all the services offered on LibrePlan website related to its  cloud plans, training, customization or support, are also availables for LibrePlan Audiovisual. Thanks to all of us who made possible the existence of this tool, and I hope it can be useful to all organizations or companies interested on improving the planning, monitoring and control of their budgets.   [Less]

After several months working on the application, it’s now available the website of the project LibrePlan Audiovisual www.libreplan.com/audiovisual It’s a section inside the main LibrePlan website, which has been the starting point for this ... [More] adaptation oriented to solve problems identified on the companies of the audiovisual sector in Galicia. More specifically on the area of budget ellaboration and monitoring of audiovisual projects. It was neccessary to have a tool to allow the standarization of budget creation on a collaborative way, and to ease controlling of costs and time deviations over the initial budget, produced during the ellaboration of adiovisual products, solving the problems due to be using other non specific tools. The project has been developed by Igalia and Wireless Galicia with the collaboration of the Galician Audiovisual Cluster (CLAG), and financed with public fundings. Among his main features we can remark the next ones: Budget templates system Create new projects from configurable template trees with the budget structure and predefined data. Budget execution forecast Visualize and modify the distribution along time of the cost of the budget items, and compare the real costs to do the neccesary adjustments. Advanced assignment of forecasts and cost details Distribute in a fine grained detail level the expenses forecast, use the cost sheets to track the produced expenses during the project and integrate the costs system with other tools to import expenses through Web Services. Filming productivities perspective Measure the productivities on the ellaboration of the multimedia product being developed, according to different unit types (scenes, minutes or script pages). Define an initial filming plan, specifying the estimated productivities, compare them with the real measurements and adapt the forecasts.   Planning, expenses and payments plan reports Generate printable reports either on PDF or HTML showing information on the project execution. More detailed information on the application features, and the documentation can be accesed at http://www.libreplan.com/audiovisual/main-features/ As the LibrePlan project, on which this solution is developed, LibrePlan Audiovisual is Open Source with AGPL license, and cam be downloaded and used freely. In the same way, all the services offered on LibrePlan website related to its  cloud plans, training, customization or support, are also availables for LibrePlan Audiovisual. Thanks to all of us who made possible the existence of this tool, and I hope it can be useful to all organizations or companies interested on improving the planning, monitoring and control of their budgets.   [Less]

Igalia will teach a workshop about project planning with LibrePlan on November 27th and 29th at...

Yesterday, we arranged the first LibrePlan hackfest at Igalia headquarters in A Coruña. Blackboard with the brainstorming of LibrePlan hackfest First of all, we started with a brainstorming where each of us provided his own ideas about how to improve ... [More] the project. We ended up with a plan for the day defined by a quite big list of topics: Right-click in the left menu of the project planning perspective. Make projects list sortable in the main Gantt view. Filter by name in projects and tasks view. Implement dependencies with lag. Avoid to leave the project perspectives without being warned if you have not saved the project. Review some bugs that were pending from some time ago and need some discussion. Give some love to help. Create a new project status called “pre-sales”. Add a milestone from WBS view. Add dependencies from WBS view. Copy/move tasks. Copy projects. Allow to modify LDAP/DB property in users edition. Review and update Fedora hacking instructions. Review some usability improvements. Mobile application for bound resources. And as you can read below the outcome was pretty good. Jacobo and Óscar at LibrePlan hackfest Jacobo was the first one finishing a task, he updates Fedora hacking instructions and also fix some issues preventing to compile LibrePlan with OpenJDK 7. Javi and Jeroen were talking about different issues around LibrePlan, from the new LibrePlan customization for the audiovisual sector, to the last events where we’ve had some talks about LibrePlan (like Libre Software World Conference and T-Dose). They also discussed about the community, the future of the project and many other things. Óscar and me started to review some bugs that have some special complexity and discussed the possible solutions. Óscar worked out a patch for bug #1413 and we also took a look to #1320, #1265 and #1553. Loren began with the protect upper menu task, in order to prevent users to lose changes when they forget to use the save button. We really think that our users will appreciate this as you won’t have to worry about it anymore as Loren and Óscar finally managed to fix it. LibrePlan mobile app screenshots During the afternoon, after a nice lunch, we carried on with the hackfest. I kept working in a small mobile application for bound users. The purpose of the app is to allow bound users query their assigned and report worked hours via the personal timesheets. The first part is almost ready and you can already see the list of assigned tasks to a bound resource in your phone. Jeroen was working a little bit in the help in order to give it a new refreshing look. Jacobo also did the task regarding to edit if a user is a LDAP or database user. And at the end of the day he was working in some usability improvements regarding how to set properly the focus while working in the WBS. Loren began an approach to include the right-click on the project/task name avoiding the need to use the box in the Gantt to enter a project or allocate a task. Javi, Jeroen and Loren at LibrePlan hackfest Javi was working in his patches to show the load of the resources to be assigned in the allocation pop-up. He also discussed some stuff with Óscar in order to improve the current implementation. Jeroen, Loren and me were debating the possible project status in LibrePlan. Finally we included two new status “pre-sales” and “on hold” and also renamed the one related with subcontracted projects to “outsourced”. So the final list of project status is: pre-sales, offered, outsourced, accepted, started, on hold, finished, canceled and stored. Finally, I’d like to specially thank Jeroen and Óscar for coming to the hackfest and contributing with their ideas and experience. And also to Igalia for sponsoring it. On the other hand, it was a pity that some people couldn’t attend in the last minute. It was a really nice day, and we hope to repeat this experience in the future, you’ll enjoy the result of this day in the next LibrePlan versions! Group picture of LibrePlan hackfest You guys rock! Happy hacking [Less]

Yesterday, we arranged the first LibrePlan hackfest at Igalia headquarters in A Coruña. Blackboard with the brainstorming of LibrePlan hackfest First of all, we started with a brainstorming where each of us provided his own ideas ... [More] about how to improve the project. We ended up with a plan for the day defined by a quite big list of topics: Right-click in the left menu of the project planning perspective. Make projects list sortable in the main Gantt view. Filter by name in projects and tasks view. Implement dependencies with lag. Avoid to leave the project perspectives without being warned if you have not saved the project. Review some bugs that were pending from some time ago and need some discussion. Give some love to help. Create a new project status called “pre-sales”. Add a milestone from WBS view. Add dependencies from WBS view. Copy/move tasks. Copy projects. Allow to modify LDAP/DB property in users edition. Review and update Fedora hacking instructions. Review some usability improvements. Mobile application for bound resources. And as you can read below the outcome was pretty good. Jacobo and Óscar at LibrePlan hackfest Jacobo was the first one finishing a task, he updates Fedora hacking instructions and also fix some issues preventing to compile LibrePlan with OpenJDK 7. Javi and Jeroen were talking about different issues around LibrePlan, from the new LibrePlan customization for the audiovisual sector, to the last events where we’ve had some talks about LibrePlan (like Libre Software World Conference and T-Dose). They also discussed about the community, the future of the project and many other things. Óscar and me started to review some bugs that have some special complexity and discussed the possible solutions. Óscar worked out a patch for bug #1413 and we also took a look to #1320, #1265 and #1553. Loren began with the protect upper menu task, in order to prevent users to lose changes when they forget to use the save button. We really think that our users will appreciate this as you won’t have to worry about it anymore as Loren and Óscar finally managed to fix it. :-D LibrePlan mobile app screenshots During the afternoon, after a nice lunch, we carried on with the hackfest. I kept working in a small mobile application for bound users. The purpose of the app is to allow bound users query their assigned and report worked hours via the personal timesheets. The first part is almost ready and you can already see the list of assigned tasks to a bound resource in your phone. Jeroen was working a little bit in the help in order to give it a new refreshing look. Jacobo also did the task regarding to edit if a user is a LDAP or database user. And at the end of the day he was working in some usability improvements regarding how to set properly the focus while working in the WBS. Loren began an approach to include the right-click on the project/task name avoiding the need to use the box in the Gantt to enter a project or allocate a task. Javi, Jeroen and Loren at LibrePlan hackfest Javi was working in his patches to show the load of the resources to be assigned in the allocation pop-up. He also discussed some stuff with Óscar in order to improve the current implementation. Jeroen, Loren and me were debating the possible project status in LibrePlan. Finally we included two new status “pre-sales” and “on hold” and also renamed the one related with subcontracted projects to “outsourced”. So the final list of project status is: pre-sales, offered, outsourced, accepted, started, on hold, finished, canceled and stored. Finally, I’d like to specially thank Jeroen and Óscar for coming to the hackfest and contributing with their ideas and experience. And also to Igalia for sponsoring it. On the other hand, it was a pity that some people couldn’t attend in the last minute. It was a really nice day, and we hope to repeat this experience in the future, you’ll enjoy the result of this day in the next LibrePlan versions! Group picture of LibrePlan hackfest You guys rock! Happy hacking :-) [Less]

Yesterday, we arranged the first LibrePlan hackfest at Igalia headquarters in A Coruña. Blackboard with the brainstorming of LibrePlan hackfest First of all, we started with a brainstorming where each of us provided his own ideas ... [More] about how to improve the project. We ended up with a plan for the day defined by a quite big list of topics: Right-click in the left menu of the project planning perspective. Make projects list sortable in the main Gantt view. Filter by name in projects and tasks view. Implement dependencies with lag. Avoid to leave the project perspectives without being warned if you have not saved the project. Review some bugs that were pending from some time ago and need some discussion. Give some love to help. Create a new project status called “pre-sales”. Add a milestone from WBS view. Add dependencies from WBS view. Copy/move tasks. Copy projects. Allow to modify LDAP/DB property in users edition. Review and update Fedora hacking instructions. Review some usability improvements. Mobile application for bound resources. And as you can read below the outcome was pretty good. Jacobo and Óscar at LibrePlan hackfest Jacobo was the first one finishing a task, he updates Fedora hacking instructions and also fix some issues preventing to compile LibrePlan with OpenJDK 7. Javi and Jeroen were talking about different issues around LibrePlan, from the new LibrePlan customization for the audiovisual sector, to the last events where we’ve had some talks about LibrePlan (like Libre Software World Conference and T-Dose). They also discussed about the community, the future of the project and many other things. Óscar and me started to review some bugs that have some special complexity and discussed the possible solutions. Óscar worked out a patch for bug #1413 and we also took a look to #1320, #1265 and #1553. Loren began with the protect upper menu task, in order to prevent users to lose changes when they forget to use the save button. We really think that our users will appreciate this as you won’t have to worry about it anymore as Loren and Óscar finally managed to fix it. :-D LibrePlan mobile app screenshots During the afternoon, after a nice lunch, we carried on with the hackfest. I kept working in a small mobile application for bound users. The purpose of the app is to allow bound users query their assigned and report worked hours via the personal timesheets. The first part is almost ready and you can already see the list of assigned tasks to a bound resource in your phone. Jeroen was working a little bit in the help in order to give it a new refreshing look. Jacobo also did the task regarding to edit if a user is a LDAP or database user. And at the end of the day he was working in some usability improvements regarding how to set properly the focus while working in the WBS. Loren began an approach to include the right-click on the project/task name avoiding the need to use the box in the Gantt to enter a project or allocate a task. Javi, Jeroen and Loren at LibrePlan hackfest Javi was working in his patches to show the load of the resources to be assigned in the allocation pop-up. He also discussed some stuff with Óscar in order to improve the current implementation. Jeroen, Loren and me were debating the possible project status in LibrePlan. Finally we included two new status “pre-sales” and “on hold” and also renamed the one related with subcontracted projects to “outsourced”. So the final list of project status is: pre-sales, offered, outsourced, accepted, started, on hold, finished, canceled and stored. Finally, I’d like to specially thank Jeroen and Óscar for coming to the hackfest and contributing with their ideas and experience. And also to Igalia for sponsoring it. On the other hand, it was a pity that some people couldn’t attend in the last minute. It was a really nice day, and we hope to repeat this experience in the future, you’ll enjoy the result of this day in the next LibrePlan versions! Group picture of LibrePlan hackfest You guys rock! Happy hacking :-) [Less]